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Merith Maurer
Merith Maurer is a vampire planeswalker hailing from, and currently bound to, the plane of Innistrad. She is primarily red and blue aligned. Description Merith is a short woman with dark brown skin and black hair. She has a stocky, muscular build in keeping with her training as a cathar during her childhood and young adulthood. She wears her hair long and unbraided since her sparking. Her blood magic has enabled her to prevent muscle atrophy, despite her current immobility. Most striking are her eyes, through which can be seen the Blind Eternities, or at least as much of the Eternities as a viewer's mind can comprehend. From afar her eyes appear to flash with bright white and grey light. Up close, their appearance differs with each viewer. Personality Merith is strong-willed and taciturn, preferring to express herself through example rather than words. As her current state makes this challenging in most situations, she often resorts to sharing visions to make her point. Abilities Due to the circumstances of her initial sparking, Merith has access to a form of blood magic that lets her see through any creature that has come into contact with her blood, or whose blood she has sampled. As she is currently unable to planeswalk, she spreads her blood using hosts in other planes, creating more blood in the bodies of those hosts, and infecting planeswalkers when she is able, to expand her vision. By concentrating she can also control her hosts for short periods of time, though this leaves her exhausted. Through this power, Merith is able to freely observe any plane she has visited, unless that plane has been sufficiently warded. She can also share her visions with any being (sentient or otherwise) that she makes eye contact with. Though Merith can, with great concentration, share large amounts of information relatively harmlessly, she can also use this vision-sharing ability to plant false memories, or traumatize anyone who threatens her. Most potent is Merith's connection with the blind eternities. She is able to channel the eldritch energy therein into different types of damaging psychic intrusion, and passively alter the perception of living creatures that come within her vicinity. These energies can frequently overwhelm her, leaving Merith occasionally unable to accurately perceive her physical surroundings, and retreat into her extraplanar visions. History Merith was born in Gavony to a merchant family. Her left the township shortly after her birth, setting out for Stensia in hopes of establishing themselves among the trading companies that sent goods through Kruin Pass. They set off with a small company of hired guards, ready for the likely encounters with bandits, werewolves, vampires, and werewolf bandits that plague the moutnains. What they encountered instead was a rockslide that destroyed the entire caravan, killing Merith's parents and all but one of the guards, a spearman named Dmitri. Dmitri brought Merith to the Heron's Grace Monastery, where she was adopted by the cathars living there, and grew up among other orphans of Stensia. She lived as happy a life as a child could have in such a dangerous region of Innistrad; Dmitri remained as a guard of the monastery, protecting pilgrims traveling through the region, and ensuring that Merith never wanted for anything he could provide. From a young age Merith trained to become a cathar, and excelled in this pursuit. She made many friends among the other orphans, including an older girl named Stel, who became her closest confidant. Together they helped the cathars fend off all manner of threats to the monastery, to include werewolf raids, vampires looking to re-claim the former Falkenrath estate, and even on occasion one of Innistrad's rare and terrible dragons. Merith often took to wandering the surrounding area beyond the regular patrols, and developed a knack for surveying the landscape and devising strategies for the cathars to best use the terrain to their advantage. During the dragon attack, she and a small party of soldiers concealed a ballista in a cave on a nearby foothill, and used it to pierce the dragon's wing. Shortly after Merith turned 17, Avacyn emerged from the helvault, granting humans in all corners of Innistrad the aid of the replenished angelic flights. Sigarda herself came to Heron's Grace to help fend off a retaliatory attack by a devil horde, and personally blessed Merith before the battle by laying hands on her eyes. The attack was successfully repelled, though Dmitri sustained fatal wounds in the fight. He passed three days later, in pain but overjoyed at the return of the angels, and with Merith at his bedside. Not a week after the devil's raid, Stel was lost in a surprise vampire attack during a routine patrol. These events sent Merith into a deep depression, which was abruptly cut short when Stel re-appeared a month later, apparently no worse for the wear. Such a re-appearance could only mean one thing: Stel had become a vampire. The other cathars would have killed her on-site, but she was too dear to Merith for either of them to raise a weapon against the other. She left the monastery after exchanging a few brief words, leaving behind only a sealed letter, with instructions for Merith to open it if she ever needed Stel's help. Merith continued to defend the Monastery for the months that followed, though she became withdrawn, performing with less and less zeal as her duties shifted slowly away from protecting to actively hunting the retreating forces of vampires in the mountains. At the same time, a priest corrupted by Emrakul's influence was appointed the new head of the Monastery, and began sending away cathars protected by Sigarda's blessing on the most dangerous missions, replacing them with other eldrazi-corrupted individuals. Merith was sent on one such assignment to kill a pack of Wolfir when she decided her loyalties could no longer remain with the church. She abandoned her patrol and set off deep into the mountains, Stel's un-sealed letter in a pouch under her breastplate. The letter directed Merith to the Outland valleys, where she wandered as the unrest and conflict with the eldrazi-afflicted grew. Eventually she found Stel living among a community of recently-sired vampires under the protection of Strefan Maurer. Strefan was desperately trying and failing to hold back the growing ranks of eldrazi vampires in the valley, and Stel was able to convince the elder vampire to let Merith remain with them unmolested, as her fighting prowess and tactical expertise could help in their fight. Merith was able to help turn the tide for a time, but Emrakul's influence spread too quickly in the valley. Strefan eventually abandoned the group after sustaining near-debilitating wounds at the hands of an eldrazi werewolf. The remaining numbers of House Maurer began to fall rapidly after that. Merith and Stel fled with the remaining vampires deep into the mountains of Stensia. They were eventually cornered in a high mountain pass by angels of the Goldnight flight. Merith was badly injured in the fight, and, as the Angels slew their few remaining comrades, she asked Stel to turn her as well, saying that she did not wish to be parted from her again. Stel agreed at once, drawing Merith's blood and sharing her own with a kiss. Something deep within Merith burst into light. Merith's spark ignited just as the angels seized here, pulled her up, and pinned her to the mountainside with a spike of silver straight into her chest. She was able to send herself to the caves of Koilos in Dominaria for a fraction of a second before the spikes pulled her back to Innistrad, binding her to the mountain. Her mind struggled to retreat back into the blind eternities, but she could not bring the rest of her body with her, so a doorway to the eternities was instead pulled into her eyes, which would have burned with eldritch corruption if not for Sigarda's blessing. The angels locked eyes with her just as they were poised to deliver a killing blow, and what was left of their minds shattered from exposure to the energy between the planes. They fell to the ground, where Stel was able to dispatch them with ease. Whatever combination of eldrazi and avacynian magic the angels had imbued their weapons with left Merith irreversibly pinned to the mountain, despite Stel's best attempts to free her. Merith was lucid only half the time, her vision constantly weaving in and out as she saw visions of this strange other world, all caves of artifice and open stretches of sand. Insects had consumed her blood on Dominaria, and now she found herself able to see through their many eyes, and the eyes of the creatures those insects bit. In her moments of lucidity on Innistrad, she begged Stel to leave her, and find a place to feed before she died of blood-thirst. It took several weeks, but finally Stel, heartbroken, slunk away from the heights to find her next meal. Merith alternated between despairing at her new predicament, and losing herself in the visions of Dominaria. With effort she found she was able to take control of creatures that had her blood in their bodies, and she sought out more populated areas of this new world. These strange visions became her one comfort, and she was delighted when, by chance, she transferred her blood through an insect-bite into another human like herself, who could move from world to world. Stel now travels regularly up and down the mountain to feed, and spends the rest of her time trying to navigate back to Merith, to try and free her, or simply be in her company. The energy of the blind eternities that seeps from Merith's eyes makes this journey difficult, and often Stel is unable to find Merith between feedings. Still she persists, hopeful that she can free her love from the mountain. All the while Merith spreads her blood further and further over the planes, delighting in all the places to be learned of and explored. Pilgrims in the Stensian mountains have occasionally sought out "the Houseless Horror," led by rumours of an oracle that can grant great wisdom or insight. Few are able to penetrate the dangers of the mountain's highest reaches. Fewer still can navigate the maze of stone and madness that lead to the oracle. And the select who do earn an audience often walk away with more insight than they bargained for.